


home

by eldritchbee



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Child Soldiers, Drabble, Gen, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, violent imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22566955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritchbee/pseuds/eldritchbee
Summary: There’s more than blood between them, and alone without each other in their beds with their families laughing and chatting (or in the trees, among the woods, thinking themselves far from blood relations) they cannot feel safe.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	home

When they think of home, a place to rest your head, somewhere _safe_

really, honestly and truly, they can only think of each other.

(It’s logical, in a way, because for them _nowhere_ else can be safe. No other person can be trusted: with secrets, with _the truth_ , with everything they’ve already shared.) 

There’s more than blood between them, there’s bones and teeth and hair and open stomachs with organs spilling out. There are ants, with you in their mouths, and there is lost limbs and lost lives. And, above all, there is _memory_ : Cassie and Tobias will never forget the way Rachel held them that night everything changed, both her hands on the sides of their faces, urging them not to look. Jake and Marco will never forget the way they looked at each other, horror on their faces, the last time they shared it was when Marcho had gotten the news his mother had died.

Ax will never forget that moment when he was told, by these aliens who were all there to see it. Will never forget that, in that moment, he knew he had to put his trust in them, because _Elfangor_ put his trust in them. He’ll never forget when they came for him either, on a suicide mission all his own

where they refused to let him die.

(As long as we’re alive, we can fight for freedom together.)

All of them, together, acknowledging also

(we understand, though, we’d _die_ for this).

There’s more than blood between them, and alone without each other in their beds with their families laughing and chatting (or in the trees, among the woods, thinking themselves far from blood relations) they cannot feel safe.

It’s why, sometimes, after a mission has finished, they all gather in Cassie’s barn

not to plan

(not so often)

but to sit, and smile, and share (blood, bones and teeth and hair, open stomachs with organs spilling out, ants and lost limbs and lost lives and alien slugs who burrow into your brain and take away everything you are, and an alien / and a brother / and a father

who died for you

who _died_ for you

who you would _die_ to keep his death from being in vain

does anyone else understand that?)

and

to feel at _home_.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written November 8 2018, not edited in any way. I just wanted to cross-post so I had it in the same place as my other stuff.


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